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Best Books for Understanding Finance

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With the best finance books, the idea of knowing how money works becomes far less daunting. Whether you’re delving into a finance-based career or you want to help others around you with their monetary woes, these titles will prove to be quite invaluable.

From learning about trends in the stock market to knowing the benefits of a wealth management firm, there are numerous things that you will learn with the best books for understanding finance.

There are over 6.3 million people currently employed in the financial sector in the United States, making it one of the most competitive fields in the world. From accountants to hedge fund managers, there certainly isn’t a shortage of titles you might be interested in.

If you are one of the many looking for a career in finance, we highly recommend investing in the best books on finance beforehand. With a more in-depth insight into financial activities, you can determine whether it’s the right career for you or not. Also, these books will become incredibly valuable resources for those already employed in the financial sector.

There’s no better way to become a more well-rounded and employable professional than to read advice, tips, and tricks from some of the most successful professionals in the business.

The best books on finance are the ones that help to make understanding money simple. You’ll have clear cut and statistically relevant information at your fingertips to give you a more in-depth insight into everything about money, whether it’s yours or a client’s. You might even enjoy reading some of the harsh stories that come straight out of Wall Street so that you can know what you’re getting yourself into.

The advice doesn’t stop there, as many of the best finance books are written in ways that can help you with your finances. If you’ve been searching for ways to improve your monetary worth, we suggest that you also consider the best books for personal finance for a more in-depth look at how you can make your money work for you.

Nothing is stopping you from becoming a successful individual in the financial sector; as long as you have the right text to guide you through, you can and will succeed.

Best Books for Understanding Finance

The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand

The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand

If you have no understanding of accounting, read a good accounting book. A good example would be The Accounting Game by Darrell Mullis.
Andrew Elliott
Founder/GoDesignerGo
Why the Rich Are Getting Richer

Why the Rich Are Getting Richer

The reason why this is my favorite book is that it is an advanced version of Rich Dad Poor Dad which explains in further details how the rich are getting richer by understanding the tax system and real financial education. [...] When I chanced upon "Why the Rich Are Getting Richer", I finally understand why I have been running my own tax consulting practice for such a long time. The global tax system is set up to benefit the rich people because they are the ones who contribute to the growth of the economy by putting investments into the economy as well as creating job opportunities.
Jack H. M. Wong
Trainer & Author
The Blank Swan: The End of Probability

The Blank Swan: The End of Probability

I am relieved to finally find a book that deals with Black Swan Events in a new way. Ayache brings a reverse-probabilistic perspective: instead of considering that a price is the result of probabilistically derived expectation, he reverses the issues and investigates these artificial constructs as "probabilities" and "expectations" as secondary, derived, fictitious concepts that we bring about to explain prices, decisions, and other things.

This, of course, is just the beginning, so one has to be understanding about the speculative aspect of the effort --so view this as a gutsy look at the "end of probability" and how we will need to envision the world once we get rid of this artificial, antiquated tool. I am also glad to see that those of us trained in the trading of options can have views original enough to influence the philosophy of probability and the philosophical understanding of contingency.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Flaneur
Rich Dad Poor Dad

Rich Dad Poor Dad

The funny thing is that the books that had the biggest impact (like my Verne’s favourite) are not necessarily the best books, objectively speaking. They were good enough to present a new worldview that I was not aware of. Timing probably was more important than their intrinsic literary qualities. They “managed” to fall into my lap at the right time. Such a book was Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, a mediocre book by my standards of today, but deeply inspirational by the ones from yesterday.

Vladimir Oane
Founder/UberVU
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

As for business, my favorite would be Good Strategy / Bad strategy by Richard Rumelt. When you read a title like this, you most likely end up wondering whether it is going to be another strategy book loaded with buzz words but lacking in articulate content. Well, this one clearly delivers. It paints an accurate picture of the problem surrounding strategy and explains why there’s so much bad strategy all around us. What a CEO or entrepreneur will find extra useful is the fact that the book also exposes what you need to do in order to create good strategies.
Radu Marcusu
CEO/Upswing
Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Brooks’s work is a great reminder that the rules for running a strong business and creating value haven’t changed. For one thing, there’s an essential human factor in every business endeavor. It doesn’t matter if you have a perfect product, production plan, and marketing pitch; you’ll still need the right people to lead and implement those plans.
Bill Gates
CEO/Microsoft
Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow

This book is amazing—it didn't change my mind, so much as it has changed the way I think. It helps to understand the difference between the way you make quick decisions, versus considered decisions—it takes different mechanisms in the brain. Understanding which you're doing at any given time can have a profound impact on what you ultimately decide.

John Lilly
Partner/Greylock Partners
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

My children’s school recommended that we read Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. The book has a lot of great information that is as applicable to managers at high growth companies as it is to parents. The key takeaway for me is that highly capable people tend to be risk-avoiders because they are afraid of failure. They get so used to being praised for their achievements that they end up not pushing themselves to their full potential for fear of looking dumb. As a parent (or a manager), the book recommends praising effort, not accomplishment, and creating an environment that encourages risk-taking and celebrates failure. This is a concept that really resonates with me, not only as a part of my parenting style, but in the way I lead at Zillow Group. Our core values as a company encourage employees to take big swings, with the understanding that they won’t all work out. It’s how we’ve achieved our current success, and it’s what motivates our employees.
Spencer Rascoff
CEO/Zillow Group
The Internet of Money

The Internet of Money

It's difficult to pinpoint an exact moment because all of the books helped me in a way. Probably a recent example was the book The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. He is talking about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. After reading this book I was, damn that's the future and I need to start investing in this technology. Didn't stop ever since.

Ionut Danifeld
Co-Founder/DevMark.co
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

I'd recommend reading anything that helps develop your ability to understand and solve a problem. Triaging issues by importance and properly identifying their causes is critical in almost every aspect of business. Without that, you can easily spend a lot of time on the wrong problem, or an ineffective solution, and your time is, more or less, your most valuable commodity. So I'd suggest books like A Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal, or Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt‎ and Stephen Dubner - books which will explore different ways of delving into problems and understanding their impact.
Dave Child
Founder/Readable.io
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

[From the book "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon"]

“The scholar argues that people are wired to see patterns in chaos while remaining blind to unpredictable events, with massive consequences. Experimentation and empiricism trumps the easy and obvious narrative,” Stone writes.

Jeff Bezos
CEO/Amazon
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Q: What is one must-read book for business leaders?

A: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Business and Life by Charles Duhigg.

Cynthia Cleveland
CEO/Broadthink
Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

This book was recommended by Daymond John on page 234 of "Tools of Titans".

Daymond John
Founder/FUBU
Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip

Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip

My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian).
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks

In this hyper networked world remade fresh every day, with new perils and new opportunities, there is one book to be sure to read: Joshua Ramo's new book, a masterpiece, The Seventh Sense. To understand the tsunami of the networked age, you need history, biography, tech, philosophy, politics--and you want a book that has a depth beyond whatever else you could be streaming, podcasting, or wiki-ing. This is that book.
Reid Hoffman
Founder/LinkedIn
The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence

The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence

Whether you are a business leader, policy maker, or entrepreneur, you need to understand Artificial Intelligence and its power to shape our future. In his brilliantly written book, Amir Husain, one of the world's leading AI experts, will help you gain that understanding.
John Chambers
CEO/Cisco
Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

I get most of my information about nutrition from medical studies. I haven’t read any books about nutrition that I agree with 100%. These are a few nutrition related books that I’ve read recently that I thought were interesting: Eat to Live (Joel Fuhrman), Why We Get Fat (Gary Taubes), and The 4-Hour Body (Tim Ferris).
Dr. Monali Y. Desai
Cardiologist & Founder/If We Were Family
Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain

Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain

This [reading something helpful] happens with pretty much every book I read. Most recently it happened to me when I was reading “Mastering Bitcoin” by Andreas Antonoupolous. I had no idea what the components of a Bitcoin wallet address were and he elegantly explains them in detail in chapter 4. It’s particularly relevant because we started CBlocks and we focus almost exclusively on wallet generation for our customers.
Auston Bunsen
Co-Founder/CBlocks

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